Category: Centrus Communities

On the 30^th August 2019, the entire team from Centrus in Dublin participated in a ‘Maintenance Day’ to help refurbish and improve the homes of the elderly community who live in Willie Bermingham Place in Dublin, in association with the charity ALONE. ALONE do not have a dedicated maintenance team and require companies like Centrus to fund and carry out maintenance work on the homes.

Willie Bermingham, who founded ALONE in 1977 began a campaign raising awareness of older people, who lived and often died alone by providing them with blankets, fuel and food. Amazing work still takes place today focusing on these vulnerable and sometimes forgotten people within our society who are either homeless, living in deprivation or socially isolated.

The maintenance project that the Centrus team were presented with for the day involved refurbishing a home for Noel, an elderly man living in Willie Bermingham Place. Noel became homeless 6 years ago when he seperated from his wife and moved out of their home. He found it hard to obtain accommodation due to older people not being seen as desirable tenants and found himself moving from place to place with just one bag.

“Three years ago I moved into an ALONE Housing unit. I am one of the fortunate ones because not everybody is that lucky to get into a place where you get all the support you need. You have your own privacy, it means the world. I’m very happy to be down there. There’s no place like your own hall door, you know, that you can call home.”

Noel

The team set to work to freshen up Noel’s home with paint and soft furnishings. The kitchen, living and sleeping areas were deep cleaned and fresh coats of paint were applied to the ceiling and walls. A new floor was laid, new curtains were hung up and the bed was dressed in new bed covers.

A few members of the team also found themselves in another home picking jigsaw pieces off the wall from a creative and imaginative elderly man who used  to live there but had since moved elsewhere. This was due to be refurbed by another corporate team a few days later for another elderly person but any help to prepare for the refurb was much needed.

The work was tiring and strenuous at times but the smile on Noel’s face when he came home to a fresh, clean house was truly warming. It is these moments, where the capacity to give something back to the community proves extremely meaningful to the individuals involved. To have the opportunity to enhance the lives of others is imperative to Centrus Communities and we endeavour to continue to make a difference in society.

You can find out more about the great work that ALONE do at: https://alone.ie/

On the 14^th June 2019, a group of volunteers from Centrus in London spent the day at The Blackfriars Settlement through the support of HandsOn London.

Blackfriars Settlement has been a registered charity for over 130 years, helping to support the most vulnerable in the community.

On the day the volunteers helped deliver an outdoor festival for local residents and for some members of the Crusoe Club.  The Crusoe Club offers a welcome to all who are aged 50 or over and living with a sight impairment. The club prides itself in creating a warm atmosphere where friends can meet and new friends made.

The Centrus team helped prepare the food, the venue and then serving drinks and sandwiches when the guests arrived.  We learned how much social interaction, music and friendly faces make a positive difference for residents.

We live up to our values of contributing to the communities around us and we were delighted that this event gave us the opportunity to give something back.

On the 13^th June 2019, a team from Centrus in London helped in refurbishing a hostel in Forest Hill for the Single Homelessness Project (SHP). SHP are a London-wide charity working to prevent homelessness and help vulnerable and socially excluded people to transform their lives. The hostel in question houses 6 people, aged 16-22, who are offered 24-hour support to bring stability and a sense of ‘home’ and help them with the skills they need to move forward positively with their lives.

The team were split into two groups; one tasked with repainting the living room and the other to start remodeling the garden. The indoor team worked hard to transform the room from one with old decoration and painting to a modern and spacious place. Meanwhile the outdoor team tackled the building and repainting of benches and helped clear the general garden area to make it a more welcoming space.

It was a tiring but incredibly rewarding day, helping to improve and support the lives of both the staff and residents of such an important place.

The Centrus team is very pleased to be joining the growing City Giving Day group of supporting companies in September this year. Centrus Communities is a precious part of our company culture and working with inspiring charities reflects our core ambition to provide modern finance with purpose. If your company would also like to join, please follow this link to register: www.lordmayorsappeal.org/cgd

We had the chance to answer the Lor Mayor’s Appeal questiosn about why we are joining and what it means to us on the CITY AM 10 July 2019 edition.

Why are you supporting CGD?

Centrus Communities is a precious part of our company culture driving a good range of community initiatives. These are inspiring charities that work in the same sectors as our financial experts. The organisational and profile support from City Giving Day gives huge momentum to the internal and external awareness of these contributions.

It also adds further opportunities for action, whether with our time, donations or professional input.

Which charities do you support?

We focus on charities, specific projects or social enterprises within our sectors of work such as the housing sector. We offer probono support to these projects and social enterprises, for example structuring, financial modelling or business planning as well as volunteering employee and partner time across a range of activities.

How will you celebrate CGD?

We are signed up to the Tour de City, always relishing a challenge! It is also part of the fund raising and training for our May 2020 ‘Cycle with Purpose’ event in which we are riding between our London and Dublin offices. We will all be celebrating by supporting the Lord Mayor’s Appeal through dressing ourselves and our office in Red for the day.

Charity in action

We are supporting the Single Homeless Project (SHP) and the Lord Mayor’s Appeal. SHP is a London-wide charity working to prevent homelessness and help vulnerable and socially excluded people to transform their lives.

“Working with inspiring charities reflects our core ambition to provide modern finance with purpose. Being part of the City Giving Day further encourages this inspiration to bring out the best in our people and teams.”

George Roffey, Head of People, Culture and Brand said

On the 12th October 2018, Jason Murphy and Mark Taheny,  members of the Centrus Dublin team participated in the ‘Shine A Light’ fundraising event which took place at The Law Society, Blackhall Place to raise much needed funds for Focus Ireland. This was Jason Murphy’s, MD for Centrus in Ireland, second year taking part in this moving event. Focus Ireland are a non-profit organisation that provide homeless services to the people of Ireland. The aim of ‘Shine a Light’ Night is to bring the business community together for one night to raise awareness and crucial funds and to stand in solidarity and ‘shine a light’ on those experiencing homelessness in Ireland today.

In Ireland, Family homelessness has reached historic numbers with over 3,800 children currently living in emergency accommodation, often unable to get to school and rarely getting a home cooked meal.

Shine A Light took place the evening after Ireland was hit by a severe storm, so rain continued to fall in buckets with our team members settled in for the night equipped only with pieces of cardboard and sleeping bags. Jason and Mark share their thoughts on the experience.

“This is my second year participating  in the Shine a Light event.  My motivations remain the same, which is

a) raise awareness of the family homelessness issue in Ireland,

b) raise funding for this issue and

c) shine a light in particular on the volume of children in Ireland who are homeless.

In my professional capacity I am already fortunate enough to work with some amazing  housing charities who have helped many families find a home.  Through this work I have a good knowledge of the housing sector and the issues being faced by all stakeholders and I have had the opportunity to use my skills to assist these excellent charities to deliver on their objectives of providing more homes for those who are in most in need.  My participation in Shine a Light has always been more focused on raising awareness (as opposed to just fundraising)with other business leaders in our community so that they can use their respective skill sets to come together to make a real impact on a very complex issue.

I mentioned in my story that every child should be able to come home and put down their schoolbag in the security of knowing they can put it down in the same place tomorrow.  For many children (over 3,800 in Ireland today) this is not the case.  I am so grateful to all those who have donated to the campaign (in particular to those who have donated for a second year) to help us exceed our target and also to all those who have engaged with us on the journey.  I hope I am inspiring others to either take part or ask the question “how can we help?”.   This year’s sleepout has continued to give me further motivation to raise awareness of the family homelessness issue in our country and I continue with my pledge to sleep out every year until I see a material resolution of this problem in Ireland” – Jason Murphy

“2018 has been a year of firsts for me – my first year with Centrus, my first time working with Approved Housing Bodies and my first year sleeping out as part of the Shine a Light campaign. I wasn’t sure what to expect on arrival (despite all I had read about previous years), but what I experienced was very different to anything I could have imagined. It was an eye-opening experience, where business leaders come together in a low profile setting to educate themselves on the current issues in homelessness, hear peoples first hand experiences, to discuss some of the highly practical ways in which we can all make a difference and to sleep out for one night to better understand how difficult it really is.

As a first timer, two things really stood out to me:

• My own naivety around the current crisis, the root causes of homelessness and what it is going to take to really make a difference.
• The amazing work that is being done by every volunteer, social worker and fund raiser.

I may not have gotten a wink of sleep that night, partly due to the hard ground, heavy rain and cold air, but, once it was over, I got to go home. I realise now that it is everyone’s responsibility in the country to fix this homelessness crisis and none of us are really ever that far from being homeless ourselves. One or two unfortunate events could leave any of us in dire need of the essential services provided by charities like Focus Ireland. Sincere thanks to all those that supported myself and Jason this year and we hope to have your continued support in futures as we try to play a relatively small part in the solution to this crisis”. – Mark Taheny

Jason and Mark set themselves a target of €10,000 to raise for the event. With the kind donations and match-funding from Centrus Communities, they exceeded this and €10,029.74 was raised for Focus Ireland. Collectively, all participants in the event has raised to date €762,198. All that was asked of these willing individuals was to ‘give one night to change a lifetime’. This one night gave Jason and Mark an opportunity to help.  Hopefully, by sharing their experiences they will have informed others of how much we need to help organisations like Focus Ireland.

We look forward to taking part in ‘Shine A Light’ 2019 and we would encourage other business leaders to do so until this issue for our country is materially resolved! Huge thanks to everyone who donated, every euro makes a difference and your contributions were really appreciated!! Focus Ireland are still taking donations from this event if you wish to help us even further!!!